The Battle Over Legalized Marijuana Is Done
(h/t: Radley Balko)
Will the Right Come Around on Pot?
Advocates of treating marijuana more like alcohol gained another ally recently: the United Nations.
The U.N. would claim otherwise. In fact, the U.N.’s International Narcotics Control Board would hotly deny it. The agency’s latest report laments the legalization of pot in Colorado and Washington, declaring the approval of recreational marijuana use “in contravention to” the 1961 U.N. Convention on Narcotics.
Raymond Yans, the head of the INCB, has gone further — arguing that ballot measures legalizing recreational, and even medical, marijuana “undermine the humanitarian aims of the drug control system and are a threat to public health and well-being.” Echoing America’s domestic drug warriors, Yans called medical marijuana “a backdoor to legalization for recreational use.”
Here in the U.S., United Nations disapproval can only help the cause of legalization where it needs help the most: on the right. According to a December poll by Gallup, Democrats favor legalization 61-38. Independents are about evenly split. But Republicans favor continued prohibition, by a 2-1 margin.
They might favor it less if they knew the U.N. were, implicitly, telling states what to do. Just look at the conservative reaction to Agenda 21 — a voluntary U.N. program that encourages bike paths and urban planning. Conservatives see it as nothing less than the first step on the road to serfdom.
Take Scott Lingamfelter, who is running for the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor in Virginia. This year he sponsored a resolution denouncing Agenda 21 as a “radical” plan for “social engineering” that was being “covertly introduced” across the nation. In a January memo to constituents, he wrote that Agenda 21 is a conspiracy to “consolidate liberal power over the rest of us” and then “tear down private property ownership, single-family homes and other basic tenets of American life.”
The national GOP shares such sentiments. Its 2012 platform declared, “We strongly reject Agenda 21 as erosive of American sovereignty.” It also devoted an entire segment to federalism. Republicans do not like ostensibly higher authorities mucking about in local matters, and that includes federal authorities. So it may be worth notice that the Gallup poll also showed a lopsided majority of Americans — 64 percent — think Washington should not step in to enforce federal marijuana laws in states where pot has been legalized.
That may be one reason the Obama administration continues to hem and haw about its plans for Colorado and Washington. During a Senate appearance last week, Attorney General Eric Holder said — again — the administration was “still considering” its options. This hasn’t pleased the nation’s drug-war hawks, who want the Obama administration to file suit, pronto, to pre-empt the legalization measures.
Federal law trumps state law, and federal law defines marijuana as a Schedule I controlled substance — in the same category as heroin. This probably seems jarring to the 42 percent of Americans who have used marijuana at least once. Marijuana is not good for you, but it is not on the same plane as smack.
The consequences of marijuana prohibition, however, have grown high indeed. Marijuana accounts for nearly half of all drug prosecutions. Even if you assume half of those cases are plea-bargained down from trafficking, the country is still spending tremendous resources to punish people for having an occasional toke.
If Holder does move against Colorado and Washington, it will be interesting to see the response from another attorney general — Virginia’s Ken Cuccinelli. On Thursday, the tea party hero and champion of states’ rights will give the opening speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. This year CPAC organizers shut out Republican Govs. Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie, who evidently committed the sin of ideological deviationism. But the organizers apparently did not mind Cuccinelli telling a class at the University of Virginia he has no objection to state-level experiments with legalization — or that his own views on the issue are evolving.
In his new book “The Last Line of Defense,” Cuccinelli contends the states provide protection from federal tyranny. This is an argument many conservatives find as appealing as they find the U.N. objectionable. And if they extend that line of thinking just a bit, they may come around on pot.
The syllogism is easy enough to follow: The U.N. should not tell Washington what it can do, and Washington should not tell the states what they can do — so why then should the states tell individuals what they can smoke? What sovereignty is more important than the individual kind?
With liberals such as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg dictating how much soda you can buy, tea party enthusiasts already are primed to declare not just “Don’t tread on me” but also, “Keep your laws off my body.” After all, as Lingamfelter put it in his January memo about Agenda 21: The great threat from the U.N. is that it wants to “tak(e) away individual freedoms from people like you and me.” And that would be, pardon the term, a real drag.
Clever Hans vs. the Fourth Amendment
Julian Sanchez:
In the early 1900s, the German public was fascinated by a mathematical Mr. Ed named Clever Hans, an Orlov Trotter horse that seemed to be capable of counting, doing basic arithmetic, and even solving elementary word problems—which, lacking the dexterity to grasp a number two pencil, it would answer by stamping its hooves. Eventually, of course, it was proven that Hans was doing nothing of the sort: the horse was perceptive rather than clever, and had been picking up on subtle, subconscious cues from his handler that let him know when to begin stamping and when (having arrived at the correct answer) he should stop.
A century later, academic researchers have shown that even well-trained drug-sniffing dogs are subject to the “Clever Hans Effect,” often alerting to non-existent drugs or explosives in locations where their human handlers have been falsely told they were present. Nor are those findings strictly academic. A recent analysis by reporters at the Chicago Tribune found that field records showed that drug-sniffing dogs produced a disturbingly high level of false positives: in only 44 percent of cases where dogs alerted did a subsequent search turn up contraband. Their success rate was even lower when it came to certain minorities: when dogs alerted on a Hispanic driver, only 27 percent of ensuing searches found any drugs, suggesting that the pooches may be picking up on their handlers’ subconscious bias, effectively legitimizing a form of racial profiling.
All this should make the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision today in Florida v. Harris disappointing to anyone who cares about the Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures. Overturning a ruling by the Florida Supreme Court, the decision holds that a well-trained drug dog’s alert during a traffic stop generally provides probable cause for a warrantless search of the vehicle—even though, as in this case, the dog repeatedly alerted at a car that turned out not to contain any of the chemicals it had been trained to detect. Urging the need for a “flexible” standard, the Court saw no need for police to maintain or provide any record of a dog’s reliability in the field—such as a count of false positives—and even suggested that apparent “false positives” might not be errors at all, since a dog might be picking up “residual odors” from drugs that had previously been in contact with the vehicle. Even if that’s true, however, it’s not clear why it cuts in the government’s direction here: if the dogs are that sensitive, it seems like an additional reason to doubt that an alert provides probable cause to believe contraband is currently present… .
How a Dog’s Nose Became a ‘Search Warrant on a Leash’
A must-read piece for anyone interested in civil liberties:
A 2011 Chicago Tribune analysis of data from suburban police departments found that vehicle searches justified by a dog’s alert failed to turn up drugs or drug paraphernalia 56 percent of the time. In 1979 six police dogs at two public schools in Highland, Indiana, alerted to 50 students, only 17 of whom possessed contraband (marijuana, drug paraphernalia, and cans of beer), meaning the false positive rate was 66 percent. Looking at the performance of an Illinois state police K-9 team during an 11-month period in 2007 and 2008, Huffington Post reporter Radley Balko found that the dog sniffed 252 vehicles and alerted 136 times, but 74 percent of the searches triggered by those alerts did not find measurable amounts of illegal drugs. Similarly, a 2006 study by the New South Wales Ombudsman in Australia, an independent agency analogous to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, looked at more than 10,000 searches of people triggered by dog alerts and discovered that 74 percent of them found no illegal drugs. More-recent data from New South Wales indicate an even higher error rate: 80 percent in 2011. …
What is going on when dogs alert and no drugs are found? Police and prosecutors usually claim these are not really false alarms because the dog must have detected otherwise imperceptible drug traces left on clothing, cars, or personal possessions.…
Russ Jones, who worked as a K-9 officer and narcotics detective in San Jose, California, for 10 years and is now a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, notes that the drug-residue excuse is a double-edged sword for police, because it undermines the case for using dog alerts to justify searches. “You’re telling me that my car can be searched because the guy who changed the tires at the tire shop smokes marijuana, and his hands tightened up the lug nuts and put the hub cap back on?” Jones says. “Suppose the UPS guy uses amphetamine or cocaine, and he drops off a book that I ordered from Amazon.com. If a dog smells it, that gives you the right to search my home?”
Read the whole thing. The Supreme Court will be ruling on this issue soon.
(via latimes)
Drug Dealing and Legal Stealing
Under federal law, property used to “facilitate” a drug crime is subject to forfeiture. In 2000, Congress added a safeguard aimed at preventing exactly the sort of injustice Caswell faces: An owner can stop a forfeiture if he shows, by “a preponderance of the evidence,” that he did not know about the illegal activity or that, once he discovered it, he “did all that reasonably could be expected under the circumstances to terminate such use of the property.”
Caswell, whose father built the motel in 1955, has not been accused of any wrongdoing, and the local Motel 6, Fairfield Inn, Wal-Mart and Home Depot have had similar problems with drug activity. But the government argues that Caswell was “willfully blind” to drug dealing and could have done more to prevent it.
Caswell, who has been running the motel since 1983, says he has no way of knowing what his customers are doing behind closed doors. He has always cooperated with the police, calling them to report suspicious activity and offering them free rooms for surveillance and sting operations.
In 2009, he got his reward: a forfeiture notice. Police had never suggested additional steps he could take to discourage crime or warned him that the motel — which supports him, his mother, his wife, their son, their daughter-in-law and their granddaughter — could be at risk.
This cruel surprise was engineered by Vincent Kelley, a forfeiture specialist at the Drug Enforcement Administration, who said he read about the Motel Caswell in a news report and found that the property, which the Caswells own free and clear, had an assessed value of $1.3 million. So Kelley approached the Tewksbury Police Department with an “equitable sharing” deal: The feds would seize the property and sell it, and the cops would get up to 80 percent of the proceeds.…
The Real Reefer Madness: Prohibition
Three decades ago, one incarcerated person out of 10 was a nonviolent drug offender. The ratio is now up to one in four. Marijuana offenders make up only a slice of that slice, yet Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron still estimates that legalizing the wacky weed would save nearly $9 billion a year. Legalizing all drugs would save $41 billion.
But at least that money is well-spent, right? Er, um. … Since 2005, federal spending on the war on drugs has risen 25 percent in nominal terms. Also since 2005, the rate of illegal drug use has risen 10 percent. Marijuana use “is the highest it has been in eight years,” the Obama administration noted last year.
Little wonder, then, that U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske admitted two years ago the drug war he spearheads “has not been successful.” Or that last year the Global Commission on Drug Policy — whose commissioners include former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and former Secretary of State George Schultz — agreed the war on drugs “has failed.” Or that this July, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie also said “the war on drugs, while well-intentioned, has been a failure.”
Despite all this, the nation’s drug warriors plow ahead, driven by the fear that doing otherwise would be inviting a world where addicts would clog the gutters and third-graders could buy smack at the corner quick-mart. They ought to look at Portugal.
Portugal decriminalized drugs — even the hardest ones — 11 years ago. Offenders are now cited for administrative rather than criminal transgressions. A 2009 Cato Institute paper by Slate’s Glen Greenwald examined what has happened in Portugal since. And?
The worst fears of drug-war hawks never materialized. Drug use has remained steady or, “in many categories, has actually decreased.” HIV infection rates and drug-related mortality rates have dropped. The bogeyman of drug tourism — in which “planeloads of students” fly to Portugal to toke up or shoot up — never showed up. In short, “none of the parade of horrors” predicted by opponents came to pass, while “many of the benefits” predicted by advocates did.
This likely is because “decriminalization was never seen as a concession to the inevitability of drug abuse. To the contrary, it was, and is, seen as the most effective government policy for reducing addiction and its accompanying harms.” Persons caught with drugs in Portugal are brought before “dissuasion commissions” whose “overriding goal” is to “avoid the stigma that arises from criminal proceedings. … At all times, respect for the alleged offender is emphasized.” Those found to have a substance problem are sent to treatment rather than prison….
Let's Hold Addicts Accountable More Effectively
A great Commentary piece by Teresa McBean:
I occasionally visit inmates and am acutely aware that our jails and prisons are full of men and women who landed there as a result of substance abuse. I can report from years of personal experience that most inmates sincerely want to return to society as clean and sober individuals.
Sincerity, however, is a very poor recovery tool. No one is more surprised than these remorseful individuals to discover that years of forced sobriety does not translate into the ability to stay clean and sober once they are released… .
When we speak of addiction as a public-health concern, we are speaking against the notion that addiction is an affliction of the morally bankrupt. In my community, I often say: “Addiction is more chemistry than character; you have an opportunity to become a person of great character as you enter into a sustained battle against your disease.” …
Many of the incredibly stupid and illegal acts of addicts are byproducts of an addict’s drive to survive — which, to them, means: use. I understand that this makes no sense to the non-addicted, but a failure to understand the problem leads to poor attempts to solve it.
Addicts are trying to survive. Active in addiction, they are incapable of thinking about anything (or anyone) else but using drugs as a means of survival… .
What would it look like if we began to think more seriously about addiction as a public-health issue? We might pay more attention to what’s happening in our own backyard — and support it with our checkbooks and our time.
In Richmond, we are blessed with a facility called The Healing Place. This is a peer-based recovery program that is incredibly effective. It works because the founders and treatment providers understand how to treat addiction. They understand that it is not only a disease, but something that changes the very fiber of family life. If we can rebuild our families, we are tackling this problem at the grass-roots level — which is not only helpful, it is sustainable.
Tom Bannard, who works at The Healing Place, offers some impressive statistics about its successes.
“Since opening in 2005, over 280 people have completed our entire program including the three- to 12-month transitional program, which requires our men to find employment, pay rent and eventually move out on their own,” Bannard said. “Of those 280, we have consistently had one-year-out sobriety success rates of around 65 percent. … Of those who completed the seven- to nine-month educational program in the past 18 months, 84 percent found employment within 60 days.”
Hey, Kids! Get your very own official Drug Enforcement Administration Rubber Ducky with badge and policeman’s hat! What could possibly be more fun?!
(Besides, it’s the perfect item to go along with bath salts.)
Pleistocene Hunter Gatherers (via azspot)
The trouble with this quote is the same trouble you encounter with “liberals believe X” or “conservatives believe X.” It fails the ideological Turing Test.
You don’t have to think the individual is always rational and smarter than the government to think the individual has a right to autonomy. Take drug legalization. Libertarians are for it. But I don’t know any libertarians who think using narcotics is smart. It is, of course, stupid and foolhardy.
The libertarian argument for legalization is twofold. The utilitarian case is that prohibition has created a godawful mess — gangs, mass incarceration of minorities, etc. — that has not reduced consumption and that legalization would ameliorate.
The deontological case is that the state has no right to dictate what you can do with your body. It’s YOUR body, and nobody else’s. People have the right to do things even when other people think they are being very stupid.
Neither one of those beliefs is predicated on the assumption that individuals are always rational.
(via azspot)
Are ABC Stores Going to Pot?
They will if one Virginia lawmaker has his way:
The proposal by Democratic Del. David Englin of Alexandria to look at the potential revenue impact of selling marijuana at the more than 330 ABC stores in Virginia joins a growing list of recommendations across the country to reform laws regarding the most commonly used illegal drug in the U.S. …
“There are respectable members of society out there, secretly smoking marijuana on the side, and the money that they use to buy that is going to criminals,” said Englin, who said he has not smoked and does not use marijuana. “Seems to me that it’d be a better idea to take that money that’s already being spent and use it to benefit the commonwealth.”
Under the resolution, eight members of the General Assembly would be selected to head a study on the feasibility and practicality of legalizing the use and sale of marijuana under certain conditions, and regulating that sale through the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. Findings would be due by the first day of the 2013 legislative session.
(Orthogonally related: Legalize hemp!)
Update: Headline of the Day! —
(From the Staunton News Leader)
